Whether it settles their feud once and for all remains to be seen, but Brooks Koepka defeated Bryson DeChambeau 4&3 in a 12-hole edition of ‘The Match’ on Friday at Wynn Golf Club in Las Vegas.
The players’ bitter rivalry took over headlines in the golf world for the better part of a year. After they temporarily put aside their differences to help Team USA dominate the Ryder Cup in September, it was announced they would square off in the charity golf match that has become a semi-regular, made-for-TV event.
“Not going to lie, I just wanted to spank you,” Koepka told DeChambeau upon clinching victory on the ninth hole.
Koepka won the second hole with a 15-foot birdie putt, then added birdies at Nos. 5 and 6 to beat DeChambeau and move 3 up.
DeChambeau hurt his chances to rally by missing a birdie putt at No. 8. Koepka responded by sinking his birdie to go 4 up.
At the par-3 ninth hole, DeChambeau conceded the match after missing another putt for birdie. Officially, the hole was halved for a final score of 4 and 3.
Playful trash talk flowed before and during the match.
“‘Brooksy’ seems to get to him quite a bit,” Koepka said on a prematch live-stream event responding to fans’ questions. “He had to go to the Tour to get them to stop.” It was a reference to the peak of the rivalry during the 2020-21 season, when fans began taunting DeChambeau by calling him ‘Brooksy’ from the galleries at tournaments. The PGA Tour eventually ruled that fans caught yelling ‘Brooksy’ would be grounds for removal from a tournament, though it’s unproven that anyone from DeChambeau’s camp ever asked the Tour to enact such an order.
Friday was the latest instalment of the celebrity match-play competition that has featured Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Charles Barkley and Steph Curry in prior editions. Mickelson and Barkley served as commentators Friday.
